The photo does not say it but they are fasting. It is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but they are nowhere near a synagogue. Alright, they are somewhat near a synagogue but it is also a Wednesday weekday work day and so they make the decision as four familial folks to stroll off their sins. There is no art to sinning but there most certainly is an art to strolling.
Their sins they keep to themselves.
The French were the ones to first grasp the cultural significance of strolling. In the 1800's, Paris was reinvented to reveal the wide avenue, the boulevard-transformed-street, and a lot more light. The man-about-town began to idle. He may have looked un peu stupide but he was a walking suit of awareness and, in the same moments, still inquisitive.
Strolling likes to define this family. They are cool Jews. (See: Sunglasses. See: His Expression.) Humanistic. Fallible. Goal-setting. Introspective. They are celebrating self-forgiveness. They are tidying up, making room for the new. It is happening very quietly and that is good. Where they will stroll to next, it is undecided. The next street, the next neighborhood. Their lives will happen one way or another but first things first: they will not wait to be somewhere else and they will not wait to have arrived.
They are hungry but sometimes that is not such a bad thing.
what a well defined family
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